dota_2_horde_modefandomcom-20200215-history
Strategy
The object of Dota 2 Horde Mode is to destroy the Dire ancient. When your own ancient is killed, you lost, and the game is over. This means that you must both defend, and attack, in order to win. Rule #1: Do not let creeps attack your buildings. Your buildings defend your ancient. Your barracks make your creeps stronger, and towers provides damage. With every building you lose, the game gets harder. Therefore you must at all costs defend your buildings. Do not get engaged with a few creeps while ignoring other creeps hitting your buildings: Your #1 rule is: Do not let creeps attack your buildings. As soon as creeps aggro on a building, you must pull them off. With every point of damage to your buildings, you get one step closer to losing. Rule #2: You must, at some point, attack the enemy buildings. This means that someone must go on the offensive, and if no one does it, that someone is you. In some games, people never attack. While that may still be a fun game, it will eventually cause you to lose. The damage to your buildings will build up, and one by one they will fall. Rule #3: There are, most often, 3 typical roles: Tank, DPS and utility. The tank The tank's job is to keep the creeps from attacking buildings or squishier team members. The tank will usually have a skill that helps in keeping aggro, such as Bristleback's Quill Spray, Axe's Counter Helix or Centaur Warrunner's Return. The tank needs a lot of health and armour, and items that give health regeneration. Typical items would be Shiva's guard, for it's armour and slowing aura, Heart of Terrasque for it's health and regen or Octarine core, which causes certain skills to lifesteal, such as Bristleback's Quill Spray. The DPS (damage per second) The job of the DPS is to do damage. Also known as the carry. There are generally speaking 3 things to damage: Creeps, Bosses and Buildings. Creeps For damaging creeps, AoE is important. In the early game, this is typically done with a skill that does AoE damage, such as Slardar's Slithereen crush, or Ember Spirit's Flame Guard. In the mid to late game, it is typically done with physical damage cleave, i.e. Battlefury, or skills that have similar effects, such as Medusa's Split shot. Bosses For damaging bosses, stuns and disables are very good, as they help the tank handle the damage output. More than that, you need single target damage, and probably some kind of regen. Be aware that most of the bosses disable Blink dagger, so you cannot use it to escape them. Buildings For damaging buildings, some heroes have skills suitable for the job, such as Tiny's Grow with Aghanim's Scepter, or Lone Druid's Spirit Bear level 4. Other skills such as Troll Warlord's Battle Trance are good for providing burst damage. You need to be quite tanky to be able to destroy the towers next to the Dire ancient. The Utility The utility is everything else that is good to have, and more often a skill, more than a hero. Stuns, AoE abilities that provide crowd control, slows or stuns, buff/debuff skills, healing, etc. Examples of utility skills would be Crystal Maiden's Frostbite (stun), Slardar's Amplify Damage, or Witch Doctor's Voodoo Restoration. The early game Some heroes have skills that allow them to farm the weak creeps faster. This is a considerable benefit to making a hero viable. Some heroes are hard to farm, and suffer greatly because of it. Do not be fooled into believing that just because you can farm fast, that this is the best thing for your team. If you play the tank and take all the farm from your DPS/carry, the game will be drawn out. If you play the carry and do not let your tank farm, you will not be able to kill the more difficult creep waves.